Councils yet to receive fire safety funding following Grenfell

None of the 36 local authorities that have asked for central government support to install tower block fire safety measures such as sprinklers have received any funding so far, housing secretary Sajid Javid has confirmed.

In July last year, Javid told local authorities they were responsible for footing the bill for fire safety improvements for their residential buildings in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire.

He said the government would “ensure that lack of financial resources will not prevent them going ahead” if councils were concerned they could not afford to fund essential safety works.

In December, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government revealed the number of councils that that had requested additional funding.

Giving an update in the House of Commons on 22 January, Javid said: “My records show that the number of authorities is still 36. We have requested further information from 10 of them, and four have provided it.”

He added no council had yet been refused additional funding and that councils had received money to help with collection of data on private buildings.

MHCLG also revealed that only three out of 160 social housing tower blocks with cladding insulation that failed fire safety tests had so far been re-clad.

Cladding has been removed entirely from 26 buildings and installation of new material has begun on nine buildings.

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